- It looks very similar. We see that it dries up day by day and we reach the same extreme values ​​we had then. It is an extremely serious situation, says Johan Szimanski.

There is now a risk of forest fire in eight counties, according to SMHI and a large number of municipalities have introduced a fire ban. High temperatures, a long period of dry weather and lack of rainfall have made it very dry in the forest. In many places, a simple spark from a fireplace can ignite directly in the ground.

Culminates on Friday

According to the forecast, the risk of fires will culminate on Friday with a continued high ignition risk on Saturday.

The two biggest risks now are if there is dry rain, thunder without rain, which ignites the forest - and that forest fires spread to the tree tops.

- We see values ​​that indicate that we can have tree top fires, that the fire spreads from top to top. Then it can go terribly fast, says Johan Szminaski.

Better preparedness

But the readiness to deal with large forest fires is significantly better today than 2014 and 2018, he says.

At the beginning of June, Sweden got two proprietary firefighters, which are parked at Skavsta Airport in Nyköping ready to water bomb where needed. The availability of emergency helicopters is also much greater today.

- Both preparedness and knowledge are greater. Above all that you draw early and can send a lot of resources from start. We have a completely different way of collaborating between the emergency services today than we had then, ”says Johan Szimanski.